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Greetings from Dallas

by Tom on March 30th, 2006

I’m writing this from Dallas Texas, home of the 2006 Spring NABC. The kickoff charity event is tonight, but I was in town early for the North American Open Pairs national finals.

The NAOPs are somewhat different from most events in the American Contract Bridge League. Most events have no pre-qualification necessary, or if there is a pre-qualification, it’s relatively minor and easy to accomplish. In contrast, the NAOPs (and it’s team counterpart, the Grand National Teams) are a ‘grass roots’ event. Qualifications start in the local clubs, and work their way up through the ranks. A unit level qualifier leads to a District final, where the top 3 pairs qualify for the national finals, played at the Spring NABC. My partner and I were fortunate enough to win the event in our district, so we were here early representing the SouthEast district of the ACBL (District 7, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Eastern Tennessee). Unfortunately, we did not qualify for the second day of play. We had a good afternoon session, but only finished average on the day. Since only 28 pairs of 72 qualified for day 2 of the event, that was insufficient.

Even in one day of play, there were some interesting hands that came up during the play. In the first session, my partner took advantage of a subtle error by an opponent to score a valuable overtrick.

	AK3
	Q96
	AQ
	KT974
J87		Q654
T8542		K73
J872		64
3		8652
	T92
	AJ
	KT953
	AQJ

My partner was declaring 6NT on the lead of a low heart, ducked around to the J. This gives my partner 12 easy tricks: 2 spades, 2 hearts, 3 diamonds and 5 clubs. Playing Matchpoint pairs, overtricks can be extremely valuable. Now that 12 tricks are secure, the goal is to try to score all 13.

My partner cashed the Ace and Queen of diamonds, crossed to a club and played the K of diamonds discarding the low spade from dummy. If the Jack had fallen, I wouldn’t be writing about this hand. Seeing that the diamonds weren’t running, my partner ran the club suit.

Consider West’s discards. 2 heart discards are easy, but it appears (mistakenly) that it might be necessary to keep the Ten and one other heart. No diamond discard is possible, so that leaves spades. Once a single spade is discarded by West, there is now a legitimite squeeze against East.

Consider this position with one club to play:

	AK
	Q9
	—
	4
J8		Q65
T8		K7
J		—
—		—
	T92
	A
	T
	—

This ending is a Criss-Cross squeeze. On the last club, South will discard the Ten of diamonds. If East discards a spade, then the Ace-King of spades will set up a spade winner in the South hand with the Ace of Hearts as an entry. Alternatively, if East discards a heart, then a heart to the Ace will drop the K, setting up the Q on the board. Spades will act as the reentry.

Making 7 on this board was worth 29.5 out of 35 matchpoints.

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POSTED IN: Tournaments